


And the Stars Will Wait

by lily_winterwood



Series: Beside the Dancing Sea [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (mostly), Alternate Universe - Selkies, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Writing and Publishing, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Biting, Contains possible spoilers for Beside the Dancing Sea, Dacha, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Frotting, Hand Jobs, Honeymoon, Lingerie, Location Change, M/M, Mute Yuuri, Muteness, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, Porn Without Plot, Selkie AU, Selkies, Shameless Smut, Smut, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 09:30:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11310570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lily_winterwood/pseuds/lily_winterwood
Summary: Now that he’s here, the reality of the situation settles in a little harder. He’s really back in this place, with a husband at his side. It really is a testament to how far he’s come since the last time he set foot in this place, since that Viktor Nikiforov had never anticipated returning here, much less married to someone.Of all the places he had hoped to take Yuuri during their honeymoon — their first trip together as a married couple — he hadn’t anticipated bringing him back to the family dacha and all the memories it evoked.





	And the Stars Will Wait

**Author's Note:**

> Aah, the long-awaited honeymoon! This was originally supposed to go up on Midsummer, but I couldn't resist timing it to the release of the new instalment of Rivals AU (you know, for old time's sake). Also there were a lot of edits that went into this, and I'd been travelling for the past couple of days, so that also contributed to the delay.
> 
> Anyway, hope you guys like this, because I've been writing this -cough- until my fingers bleed and my heart aches.

Viktor remembers, from his childhood, the long car rides up to the family dacha from Saint Petersburg. He’d often go through two or three books on the car rides alone, sprawled in the back seat with his stuffed animals and most of the luggage and groceries.

Taking a train to it is a little different than what he’s used to, but most of the scenery remains the same sort of brown-and-green blur. He and Yuuri have an entire compartment to themselves, and Yuuri is sprawled out on the seat next to him with his head in Viktor’s lap, fast asleep and snoring lightly.

The nine-hour flight to Saint Petersburg had been exhausting, especially coupled with the three-and-a-half-hour layover in Amsterdam. Yuuri had slept through the flights and wandered through the airport in Amsterdam with a set of headphones on and his hand firmly in Viktor’s. And now they’re on the train out of Saint Petersburg towards Priozersk, and Viktor heavily debates the merits of waking his husband up so he can see the fields and towns flying by.

Husband. What a strange and wonderful notion. If someone had told him in 2011 that he would be married to someone as singular as Yuuri Katsuki, he would have laughed at them. But then again, the person he was in 2011 had been rasher, crueller. He’s not proud of who he had been — but then, is anyone ever proud of who they had once been? All he really can do is try to be better. Not just for Yuuri, who deserves the sun and the moon, but also for himself. Being with Yuuri has taught him that at least.

Yuuri shifts in his sleep, pressing his face against Viktor’s stomach and sighing. Viktor shivers, despite the compartment not being cold at all, and closes his eyes.

They arrive in Priozersk as the sun begins to set, the clouds dyed bright shades of gold and pink as they exit the platform. A brisk breeze from the lake on the other side of the tracks whips at their hair. Viktor takes out his mobile as soon as they’ve cleared the red barn-like station building, and rings Meri, the old caretaker of the dacha who’s agreed to drive them there. Next to him, Yuuri leans against their suitcases and yawns widely, still a little asleep.

The drive from the station to the dacha is much more familiar than the train ride. Viktor watches Yuuri press his face to the car’s windows, gasping in wonder out at the lake and the passing town. His heart thrums with excitement — an entire week with nothing to worry about, and no one to worry about except Yuuri.

“It’s been a while since I saw you up here, Vitya,” Meri says in Russian, her eyes glancing up to the rearview mirror to look at him. Viktor smiles. “You must be very busy?”

“You could say that,” agrees Viktor. The caretaker’s eyes crinkle; her hair is now more grey than brown and there are several new lines on her weathered but kindly face. Still, seeing her brings back memories of old family vacations. “How is the cat?”

“Naaki died a couple years back,” replies Meri.

“Ah.” Viktor purses his lips. It really _has_ been a while since his last visit. “Sorry to hear that.”

Meri makes a noncommittal noise. From next to Viktor, Yuuri raises an eyebrow, as if asking about what he had just said.

“I enquired after the cat that used to live with Meri down the street from us,” says Viktor in English. “She passed away a few years ago.”

‘Tell her I’m sorry for her loss,’ Yuuri suggests.

Viktor nods and turns towards the front. “My husband also says he’s sorry for your loss,” he tells Meri. She looks at Yuuri through the rearview mirror and smiles.

“Thank you,” she offers in hesitant English, and Yuuri smiles back, before turning to gaze out the window once more. The car bumps along a dirt road for a moment or two, passing a couple small cottages with gardens in full bloom. Finally, they pass by a copse of trees and pull up in front of a slightly larger cottage that looks as if it had once been three smaller buildings, now joined together. The light from the setting sun burnishes its wood-and-stone exterior, and the gentle lapping of the lake against the pebbled shore is all that can be heard once Meri kills the engine.

Viktor is out of the car in an instant, rushing around it to let Yuuri out. The selkie steps out and inhales the crisp, clean air, a smile slipping onto his face as he takes Viktor’s hands and presses a kiss to the golden wedding band. Viktor feels his heart flutter.

Yuuri helps Meri unload the luggage and she thanks him in English again, before turning to Viktor. “I stocked the fridge with some basic staples, but if you need anything else, just call and I can fetch it from the store in town.”

“Thank you,” Viktor replies, hugging her briefly. For what it’s worth, Meri had always been kind to him, through the good times and bad. “I should’ve come up earlier; I missed all of this. And it’s a shame I didn’t get to say goodbye to Naaki.”

She waves her hand. “She had a good, long life,” she says. “I’m sure she’s tormenting other cats now, in her next one.” She then turns to Yuuri and bids him goodbye, before clambering back into her car and driving off. Yuuri pulls out his mobile, and raises an eyebrow.

‘The signal _is_ awful,’ he says after he pockets his phone, and Viktor chuckles. They roll their suitcases up to the front door, which Viktor unlocks before scooping Yuuri up in his arms and carrying him over the threshold.

Yuuri kisses him the moment Viktor sets him down. For a long while they remain that way, and with each heartbeat, Viktor finds himself wanting more and more to remain bracketed in Yuuri’s arms with their luggage forgotten just outside the open doorway. But Yuuri pushes him back after they break for air, and slips back out to fetch their suitcases.

“What was the point of me carrying you into the house if you’re just going to head right back out again?” Viktor asks as Yuuri closes the door with his hip and turns on the lights.

Yuuri shrugs, before taking off his shoes and shrugging out of his coat. Viktor does the same, hanging both of them up in the closet next to the stairwell. He turns to his husband then, who is surveying the entryway with almost childish wonder.

“Like what you see?” Viktor asks, gesturing around him. The dacha is cosy, with wood panelling and flooring and handmade lace curtains and spreads all over the spindly tables and squishy armchairs. Old photos of the Nikiforovs hang on the walls, and above the mantelpiece in the living room there is a stuffed head of a buck. Yuuri’s eyebrows dart up in amusement when he notices it.

‘Is that real?’ he asks.

Viktor shrugs. “Boris has been there for as long as I can remember. Mama and Auntie have different stories about how we got him.”

Yuuri’s eyes light up, and he leans forward, bobbing his head before signing a greeting to the buck. Viktor laughs at that, sliding his arms forward to wrap themselves around Yuuri’s soft midsection, earning himself a tiny gasp and an armful of happily squirming selkie. He wouldn’t have traded any of this for the world.

“Let me show you around,” he offers in Yuuri’s ear, and Yuuri nods eagerly in response.

Viktor gives his husband a brief tour of the first floor, showing him where the kitchen and dining areas are, as well as the guest room and the covered porch where he had sometimes slept as a kid on sweltering summer nights. Just looking out on the old daybed on the porch as well as the old wicker chairs and table brings back the ghosts of childhoods past.

Now that he’s here, the reality of the situation settles in a little harder. He’s really back in this place, with a husband at his side. It really is a testament to how far he’s come since the last time he set foot in this place, since that Viktor Nikiforov had never expected to return here, much less married to someone.

Of all the places he had hoped to take Yuuri during their honeymoon — their first trip together as a married couple — he hadn’t anticipated bringing him back to the family dacha and all the memories it evoked. And yet, here they are, because Viktor had thought it wasn’t fair for him to have been folded so thoroughly into Yuuri’s family in Torvill Cove without reciprocation, and Yuuri had wanted to come up here for years.

Yuuri takes his hand, leans his head on his shoulder. Viktor turns his head, pressing a kiss to Yuuri’s hair. When the selkie looks up and yawns innocently at him, Viktor remembers that there’s still an entire second floor of the dacha to show him.

“Come on, let me show you our bedroom,” he offers, and Yuuri smiles.

Viktor lugs their suitcase up the stairs, pausing on the second-floor landing to wait for his husband. For a moment, his feet almost trace the path to the room that used to be his, but he resolutely leads Yuuri to the master bedroom instead. 

Yuuri takes a shine to the large four-poster bed in there, testing out the mattress with a couple good bounces before flopping back with a grin. ‘Remember when we had to get a new bed at the cottage?’ he asks.

Viktor chuckles and nods; that had been an embarrassing moment for both them and their landlady.

“Well, I can assure you this bed has withstood an entire army of little Nikiforovs,” he says as he pulls out his mobile to connect to the WiFi and send an email to his new mother-in-law about their arrival. “If it were less sturdy, it would’ve broken years ago.”

He fires off the email, telling Hiroko that he and Yuuri had arrived safely, and asking if Makkachin missed them already. Pocketing his mobile again, Viktor crosses over to the bed and climbs on next to Yuuri, who has now laid down on top of the duvet and is making angel shapes in the golden brocade.

“Come here,” he says, pulling his husband close, and Yuuri goes willingly, slotting with practiced ease into the crook of Viktor’s arm and nuzzling up close. He would’ve thought a couple years of knowing Yuuri would’ve dulled the butterflies in his stomach, but apparently not — they are as excitable now as they had been from the first moment their eyes met at the Leroy party three years ago.

He would’ve held Yuuri closer, would’ve captured his husband’s lips to kiss him senseless, but he yawns before he can do that. Yuuri laughs, turning his head to rest his chin on Viktor’s chest.

 _Tired_? he traces into Viktor’s chest. Viktor tries to shake his head, but the gesture is belied by another yawn. _You should nap_.

Viktor pouts. Yuuri raises an eyebrow.

‘I’m not having sex with you when you’re tired,’ he declares, sitting up and patting Viktor’s cheek reproachfully. ‘You should take a nap. I’ll make dinner.’

“Bagsies on breakfast,” mumbles Viktor. The room is swimming a little already as he turns to watch Yuuri clamber off the bed. The selkie leans forward to kiss his forehead, and then motions for him to get under the covers.

‘I’ll see you when you wake,’ he says, and Viktor waits until his husband has disappeared out of the room to close his eyes and succumb to sleep.

* * *

With his husband asleep, the dacha feels much more bigger and solemn. The silence presses in on Yuuri a little as he closes the door of the master bedroom behind him; he feels obligated to tiptoe his way across the landing to the stairs like a thief instead of a guest.

At the stairs, he pauses and looks back down the hallway at the other doors. Curiosity bubbles up inside him, and before he can talk himself out of it, he heads over to the door next to the one for the master bedroom, and peers inside to see another bedroom, with a double bed and a handsome cherry desk looking out the window. Yuuri tiptoes through it, opening one door to reveal a closet full of sports equipment and board games printed in Cyrillic, and the other to reveal a bathroom that connects it to the other bedroom.

That bedroom, when Yuuri steps into it, is clearly a kids’ room. There are two sets of bunk beds, as well as multiple dressers, and a low table and armchair surrounded by shelves crammed with old toys and books. Both Russian and English titles peer at him, though many of the Russian ones appear to be children’s books, and the English ones are classics.

Yuuri imagines, briefly, a younger Viktor curled up in that armchair with English books, slowly developing the interest in writing that set him apart from his skater family. How different would things have been if he had not? The idea seems almost outlandish — as far as Yuuri’s concerned, Viktor had been destined to become a great author.

But now he’s also Yuuri’s husband.

And standing in this bedroom, looking at the well-loved copies of _Pride and Prejudice_ and _Lord of the Rings_ on the shelves, feels like standing in the eye of a maelstrom of memory.

It’s one thing to hear Viktor talk about his past; it’s another to confront the physical spaces of it head-on. Slowly, Yuuri backs out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him with a guilty-sounding click. The hallway feels almost like a sanctuary now, and he almost trips over his own feet as he flees down the stairs towards the kitchen to make dinner.

Nine in the evening is a little late to eat dinner, but Yuuri makes one anyway, cobbling together what little he can find in the fridge and pantry to make pasta with a béchamel cheese sauce, accompanied by some sliced cucumbers. They’ll have to ask Meri to take them into town for more groceries, because what’s currently available will need a little augmenting to last the week.

An entire week with no obligations, no intrusions. He’ll ask for the WiFi password eventually, but he hopes he won’t have to use it often. After all, Viktor will be with him the entire time, and his husband has a way of making Yuuri forget about the rest of the world. Every moment with him, stolen or rightly earned, is an eternity of bliss as far as Yuuri’s concerned.

Viktor is still asleep by the time Yuuri returns to the bedroom. He’s content to watch him for a little while, admiring the silver gleam of his hair and the softness of his smile in sleep. He looks so vulnerable in this moment; Yuuri almost feels bad for trying to wake him.

He clambers into bed beside Viktor, taking his husband’s hands and pressing soft kisses to the tips of his fingers. Viktor’s lips curve upwards, and Yuuri giggles quietly as he leans up to pepper more kisses along Viktor’s jaw.

Viktor cracks an eye open just as Yuuri reaches his chin. He tilts his head to capture Yuuri’s lips, and Yuuri feels that familiar gnaw of longing in the pit of his stomach where not even the most open of kisses feels close enough.

“Is it dinner already?” wonders Viktor when they break apart. Yuuri nods, and Viktor sits up to rub the sleep from his eyes.

They eat dinner in a companionable silence, splitting a bottle of champagne bought from the airport in Amsterdam between them. Viktor devours the pasta with an excitement that makes Yuuri blush; his cooking couldn’t possibly be _that_ good.

“Sorry, I just like your cooking,” Viktor says suddenly, as if he’d read Yuuri’s mind, and Yuuri hides his cheeks behind his hands. They’re _married_ now, and he _still_ blushes like a schoolgirl whenever Viktor compliments him.

After dinner, Viktor says he has to take care of something, and kisses Yuuri briefly before disappearing back towards the stairs. Yuuri does the washing up alone, leaving the dishes to dry on a rack by the sink, and admires the changes in the wood between the kitchen and the dining space. It seems as if some parts of the dacha are newer than others.

He heads through the sliding doors to the porch after the last dish is set to dry. It is considerably cooler here than in the house, with the screens pulled down to ward off bugs. The light from the house diffuses over the wicker furniture and the old daybed with its large decorative cushions. Yuuri sinks down onto the daybed, gazing up at the ceiling fan as he listens to the night around him. Somewhere down the road a dog barks, followed by the calls of nightjars and owls in the trees and the steady lapping of the lake against its shore. For Yuuri, these lake ripples are to ocean waves as sea lions are to seals — different, yet familiar.

Viktor’s family had invited them up to the dacha several times before, usually around the holidays and in the summer. But this had been the first time they’d taken the offer, because both the release and the subsequent publicity tour for _On My Lov_ e had taken so much out of Yuuri. And then Viktor had to do the same thing with _Waiting for the Light_ , which meant that in between writing, book-related events, and wedding planning, they’d only had a handful of weekends at a time to call their own. Coming up to the dacha had languished at the bottom of their priority list until Viktor’s mother had offered it as a honeymoon location.

Because of their busy schedules, Yuuri hadn’t had the opportunity to meet all of his husband’s family members until the wedding. He’d met his new mother-in-law over a Skype call, of course, and she was witty and friendly and kept congratulating him for tying down her wayward son, but the number of times he’d seen her in person could be counted on one hand. Now that he and Viktor were writing a novel together, maybe there’ll be more opportunities to visit Viktor’s family.

Maybe they’ll set the novel in Russia for the express purpose of doing so. Yuuri laughs a little at that. He wouldn’t mind coming up here more often, even though it would probably cost them a small fortune to do so.

“Darling?”

Viktor’s voice stirs him from his thoughts. Yuuri sits up, and swallows when he sees the form of his husband silhouetted in the light from the house. Viktor is leaning against the dining table in a white bathrobe, with white stockings peeking out from underneath. His hair is still wet from the shower, and he’s running a towel through it as he watches Yuuri.

Yuuri steps back into the house, coming to a stop in front of Viktor, who shifts a little so that he can bracket his legs around Yuuri’s hips. The tie of his bathrobe loosens, exposing tantalising glimpses of shower-flushed skin. Yuuri’s heart pounds at the sight.

Viktor kisses him slow and sweet, a low hum resounding in his chest when Yuuri slips a hand under white terrycloth to palm against his chest. Yuuri smiles against Viktor’s lips as his fingers circle his nipples, eliciting soft sighs as he brushes them to pertness. And when Yuuri’s other hand brushes against Viktor’s thigh, he can almost feel the tension coiling through his husband’s body.

“Yuuri,” breathes Viktor, his hands gripping the edge of the dining table with white-knuckled need. Yuuri’s hand skims the soft skin on the inside of his thighs, toying with the lace tops of the stockings as his eyes feast on Viktor’s physical reactions. A cute little flush is creeping up Viktor’s chest to his face, and Yuuri loves it.

The hand travelling upwards moves away to undo the rest of Viktor’s robe, and his husband takes this opportunity to shift farther back onto the table, until he’s mostly sitting on it. Yuuri captures his lips again, both of his hands pulling the robe aside to reveal a set of lacy white knickers framed by a matching suspender belt. He swallows at the sight, earning him an amused chuckle in response.

The need that has smouldered in him since their arrival sparks into flame. He leans up and bites along the juncture of Viktor’s neck and shoulder, marks his ownership into his husband’s pale skin. Viktor cries aloud, one hand gripping at the hairs at Yuuri’s nape, the other still clinging to the table’s edge. Yuuri sucks a trail of marks along Viktor’s collar, savouring the needy noises that he makes.

His fingers fumble a little, but they eventually unclasp the suspender belt before skimming along the scalloped edge of Viktor’s knickers. His mouth, too, moves lower and lower, down Viktor’s sternum to his navel, raising small red marks in its wake. Viktor’s hand moves to entangle in his hair completely, gripping with a surety that jolts heat straight to Yuuri’s cock.

Viktor arches his hips when Yuuri’s hands move to push the suspender belt down, though he whines a little when the knickers don’t go with it. Tossing the belt aside, Yuuri then leans back up to claim Viktor’s lips again, his fingers now skimming the silk of Viktor’s stockings as he pushes them off his legs.

“Yuuri, please,” murmurs Viktor into the kiss, rocking back and forth from the anticipation. Yuuri doesn’t need telling twice; he kneels down just enough to press kisses from Viktor’s navel downwards, until his lips meet lace and he feels the trembling in Viktor’s thighs once more. He breathes against the flimsy white fabric, and Viktor gasps.

Yuuri’s not entirely sure what possesses him to peel back Viktor’s knickers with his teeth, but Viktor seems to jolt at the sight, a needy whine escaping his throat as his hips buck and his straining cock shifts a little into Yuuri’s line of sight. The tip is already beaded with precome; in the dim lighting of the room it almost seems to shine. Yuuri longs to feel the entire length in his mouth.

His fingers make short work of the lingerie, then, and Viktor moans again when Yuuri’s lips envelop the tip of his cock. Yuuri can feel him trembling; he flicks his tongue along the slip and Viktor cries out his name.

That’s the thing about making love to Viktor — there’s not as much pressure to perform, since everything he does seems to please him. Even though Viktor’s so much more experienced, he still melts at Yuuri’s touch, still comes undone under Yuuri’s hands and fingers. It makes Yuuri want to try his best to please him, for nothing more than love.

 _Love, the breaking of your soul upon my lips_ , Yuuri thinks absently, as his fingers skim along Viktor’s hipbones, and his mouth bobs up and down along Viktor’s length. He tastes the salt of Viktor’s skin, feels the heavy warmth of Viktor’s cock filling his mouth. Viktor’s fingers tighten in his hair; his hips tremble with barely-contained restraint from bucking upwards into Yuuri’s mouth.

Yuuri traces a heart into Viktor’s hip as he picks up the pace, and hears the smack of Viktor’s hand against the table as he bites down a pleasured scream. His legs wrap around Yuuri’s back, toes curling, thighs trembling — he must be close, and a bubble of pride expands in Yuuri’s chest at the thought that he’s the one who’s bringing Viktor to the edge.

“Yuuri! Oh god,” whines Viktor. “I’m going to —”

Yuuri pulls back, just as Viktor’s come splatters over his nose and lips. Viktor scrambles for a serviette to wipe it from his face, his expression apologetic.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve given you more warning,” he says.

‘It’s fine,’ says Yuuri with a slight shrug, before slicking up one finger in the residue and tasting it. Viktor’s entire face flushes red — two years of blowjobs, and Viktor still treats Yuuri swallowing his come like it’s some sort of honour.

Viktor straightens up a little, putting his robe back on from where it’d fallen. He then flexes his shoulders — Yuuri’s throat goes dry at the sight of Viktor’s muscles rippling in the half-light — and tilts his head at Yuuri. “You seem terribly overdressed,” he remarks, before leaning up to straighten Yuuri’s glasses. Yuuri’s heart skips a beat at the gentle brush of Viktor’s hands against his cheek.

‘Nearest bed?’ he asks. Viktor nods, and Yuuri extends a hand to help his husband off the table.

They’re barely through the doors into the guest room before Viktor is on him again, kissing him against the wall, fingers scrabbling at the hem of his t-shirt. “I knew it,” he pants against Yuuri’s lips in between kisses, as he lifts Yuuri’s shirt over his head. “I knew we wouldn’t make it back upstairs.”

Yuuri raises an eyebrow. Viktor laughs, before pulling back and reaching into the pocket of his bathrobe and pulling out a small tube and a condom.

“I prepared myself a little, but it won’t hurt for you to do it again,” he says, and starts kissing a line down Yuuri’s neck, lips wet and heated against his skin. Yuuri sighs into the touch, his eyes falling closed for a moment and his body going slack under his husband’s lips. Viktor reaches down, palms him through his jeans, and Yuuri bites his bottom lip so hard it’s a miracle he doesn’t taste blood.

Viktor’s lips leave the trail at his collar, but his hands undo the fly of Yuuri’s jeans so that he can slip one beneath the denim, palm heated against his hardness. The other moves up to remove Yuuri’s glasses, placing them into the pocket of his robe with a wink. Though the world blurs a little, Yuuri can still make out the gleam in his husband’s eyes moments before Viktor kisses him. His mouth opens to Viktor’s tongue, wet and wanting; his mind focuses on nothing beyond the exquisite closeness between their bodies. Every point of contact between them is a spark of heat, as Viktor never fails to set him alight with want.

His husband now pushes his jeans off his hips, squeezing at his ass once the denim pools at his feet. Yuuri arches into the contact, his hands coming around Viktor’s shoulders, before he starts walking them both back towards the bed.

Once there, Viktor shrugs out of the robe and sprawls down on all fours against the pillows, presenting himself. At the sight, Yuuri’s heart pounds a little harder; his briefs get a little tighter. His hands grab at Viktor’s ass; his lips kiss the dimples at the small of his back. He then presses a lube-slicked finger to Viktor’s hole, and it lets him in smoothly.

Viktor is already loose, he can feel, but with a little more prodding, he eases him open further. Viktor sighs into the touch, indolently fucking back against Yuuri’s fingers as he holds Yuuri’s gaze over his shoulders.

 _Loving you will be the death of me_. The words come to Yuuri half-out of a dream, and he can’t help but chuckle at how fitting it seems — the way Viktor looks in the moonlight filtering through the window makes Yuuri’s heart stutter and his breath catch. In a sense, he’s dying; the longing for Viktor’s body burns in him like his need for oxygen.

He removes his fingers, to a needy whine. He then quickly slides off his briefs, chuckling at how Viktor wriggles impatiently as he rolls on a condom and slicks up his cock, and rolls his hips almost as soon as Yuuri lines himself up against his entrance. When he presses in, Viktor makes a strange noise that seems caught between a sigh and a cry.

Yuuri goes slow at first, letting Viktor’s body adjust around him, but as he picks up the pace, he finds it harder and harder to hold back. His thoughts seem fuzzier now, like they sometimes are when he is wearing his skin — all he knows clearly is that Viktor is tight, slick heat around him, trembling walls swallowing his cock with wanton greediness.

His mouth latches onto Viktor’s nape again, animalistic heat coursing through him at the sound of Viktor’s keening response. Briefly, he thinks of the seals that cavort in the harbour of Torvill Cove during the early fall, blowing columns of bubbles as they dance around one another down towards the sea bed. He had never seen much use in such behaviour, but now — now, with Viktor gasping his name, singing his praises into the darkness as his hips snap back to meet Yuuri’s every thrust — now he understands it a little better. Viktor gives him that same playfulness, that same drive — that same desire to love so fully that his heart bursts.

Yuuri comes too soon for his liking, panting heavily against Viktor’s neck as he feels his climax wash over him. Viktor’s body moves beneath him with each ragged breath; Yuuri’s hand reaches down, takes him in hand, and coaxes him to a second orgasm.

He barely has energy to dispose of the condom, and Viktor also just scrubs at the spot on the duvet with his bathrobe in a half-hearted attempt to clean. They lie down together, though, arms wrapped around one another, and Yuuri briefly touches Viktor’s neck and startles at the sight of blood.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he signs, but Viktor chuckles and rubs at it sheepishly.

“It’s not that much,” he says. “You didn’t hurt me.”

Yuuri purses his lips, and dabs at Viktor’s neck with the hem of the bathrobe. As if to reassure him, Viktor peppers kisses around Yuuri’s face, smiling against his cheeks as his fingers brush against Yuuri’s jaw.

“Sleep, my love,” he murmurs, and with a sigh Yuuri lets go of the robe and obeys.

* * *

Viktor wakes before Yuuri the next morning. Though he winces at the soreness of his body, all thoughts of discomfort flee him at the sight of his husband sleeping next to him. Yuuri’s wedding band gleams in the light filtering through the lace curtains; his dark lashes kiss his rose-flushed cheeks, and _oh_ — Viktor wants to kiss all of it. His chest feels overwhelmingly full of something light and fuzzy, and it only gets worse as Yuuri turns in sleep from his side to his back, exposing the smooth light tanned line of his neck, mottled with Viktor’s lovebites from the past two days.

The sight of it only makes Viktor want to mark him up more, touch him more. He wants to memorise Yuuri like this — lying debauched and beautiful in the guest room of the Nikiforov family dacha, a thrilling new memory to supplant the old ones. Boldly, he rests a hand on Yuuri’s chest, feeling it rise and fall with Yuuri’s breathing. He leans down then, taking one nipple between his teeth and laving it with his tongue, and then repeating it with the other until they are both stiff and dark against the morning light.

He feels Yuuri stir a little, a soft sigh escaping him. His cock twitches a little in interest as he moves the duvet further down, exposing the curves of Yuuri’s belly and hips, and the trail of dark hair leading down from his navel.

He bends down to lavish kisses to Yuuri’s skin, all light, playful pecks as he moves inexorably downwards to his goal. Yuuri stirs again, his hands moving down to entangle his fingers in Viktor’s hair. Viktor looks up, and sees a hint of brown from behind Yuuri’s lashes.

“Good morning,” he says cheerily, before blowing a raspberry into Yuuri’s stomach. Yuuri’s body curls up with a giggle, and Viktor can’t help but smile against Yuuri’s skin before he does it again and is rewarded with an amused tug at his hair.

Yuuri yawns then, shifting himself upwards onto one elbow. Viktor removes the rest of the duvet, exposing his husband’s soft cock. He reaches — Yuuri nods — and pushes back the foreskin to press a kiss to the tip.

Feeling Yuuri harden in his mouth is something Viktor always craves. Feeling first-hand how much the selkie wants him, how much he craves him — it never fails to set something fluttering in Viktor’s stomach. Yuuri’s legs spread, and Viktor happily settles between them as he continues to bob his head along Yuuri’s shaft. His fingers ghost along the sensitive skin of Yuuri’s inner thighs, before tracing around the pucker of Yuuri’s hole. Yuuri’s hand tightens in his hair; the other is already fumbling for wherever the bathrobe holding the lube had been discarded from the night before.

When Viktor slips a slicked finger into him, Yuuri bites at his lower lip and dig his fingers into the sheets. When Viktor crooks his finger, brushing against that sweet spot just inside, Yuuri throws his head back and bucks his hips up, causing Viktor to gag. He pops his mouth off Yuuri’s cock to recover, chuckling at Yuuri’s frantic expression and signed apologies.

“It’s fine! I’m fine — give me a moment.” And he leans up to kiss Yuuri, drinking in the ecstasy of his lips as his other hand continues where his mouth had left off.

When he returns his mouth to Yuuri’s cock, he can feel the trembling through Yuuri’s body as the selkie struggles not to buck up into his mouth again. Viktor chuckles, his breath tickling against velvety skin. Yuuri inhales sharply, especially when Viktor brushes against that spot again, and again, and again —

“You’re beautiful like this,” Viktor murmurs, pressing soft kisses along Yuuri’s length as his finger thrusts below and he feels the tension vibrating in Yuuri’s thighs around him. “I mean, you’re always beautiful, but like this? You’re exquisite. Though I’m not quite sure that’s the right word for it, either. Delectable? Sublime.”

Yuuri chuckles, his expression caught between exasperation and fondness as he tugs at Viktor’s hair, as if to remind him what he really should be doing. Viktor acquiesces, taking Yuuri into his mouth again and starting to pick up the pace. His finger also quickens, and he is rewarded with the digging of Yuuri’s fingers into his scalp and the sight of Yuuri’s mouth open in ecstasy.

When he crooks his finger against that spot again, Yuuri comes, tossing his head back against the pillow as his fingers tug hard enough at Viktor’s hair to elicit tears. Viktor blinks them away quickly, savouring the hot bitter-salt taste of Yuuri’s come down his throat as he swallows, and straightens up to wipe his lips in full view of his blushing husband.

“Delicious,” he says, and Yuuri lightly smacks his forearm.

‘I thought you promised breakfast,’ he signs.

Viktor hums. “I did,” he says. “I just happened to crave a little Japanese.”

Yuuri’s cheeks flush harder at that, and though he smacks Viktor again, he’s also smiling.

Viktor matches his smile with one of his own, and reaches up to brush Yuuri’s hair out of his eyes. “What’s in the fridge?” he asks, a little more serious this time.

Yuuri shrugs. ‘Not much,’ he replies. Viktor clambers out of bed, then, grabbing the bathrobe as he goes. He hands Yuuri back his glasses, before running a hand through his husband’s dark locks and kissing him.

Yuuri joins him in the kitchen minutes later, dressed in his t-shirt and briefs. ‘Your lingerie from last night is still on the dining room table,’ he points out. Viktor laughs as he continues to beat a bowl of eggs for some omelettes.

“Do you mind clearing them?” he asks. Yuuri nods, pressing a kiss to the side of Viktor’s neck before disappearing back into the dining room.

Viktor looks around at the kitchen, taking in the changes from the last time he visited the dacha. His parents had kept most of the kitchen appliances and utensils in the same place, but the cabinets of dry ingredients and snacks have been switched up, and the inventory of edibles has changed considerably. It’s almost like wearing shoes on the wrong feet, but Viktor reckons he’ll get used to it by the end of the week.

Yuuri returns, and Viktor turns to see his husband tell him that his lingerie has been moved. He smiles and thanks him, before turning his attention back to the stove. Yuuri leaps onto the counter next to him, ankles knocking against the wood cabinets. He briefly winces — possibly from some post-fingering soreness, though Viktor imagines it can’t possibly be as bad as his own — before asking if he could help.

“Nope,” replies Viktor as the skillet heats up on the stove. “I’m making it just the way you like them, so you don’t have to.”

Yuuri’s eyes sparkle. ‘You’re the best, Viktor,’ he signs, and Viktor is certain that the day that his heart does not skip a beat at the sight of Yuuri tracing a heart around his mouth will be the day of his funeral.

After breakfast, Viktor does the washing up as well, though Yuuri helps him dry the dishes and sets them away. As soon as the last fork is set back in its drawer, Yuuri loops his arms around Viktor’s waist and draws him in for another kiss.

‘Show me around the back,’ he suggests when they pull apart, nodding his head towards the kitchen window which looks out into the lush green backyard. Viktor grins, taking his husband’s hand and kissing his ring.

“As you wish,” he replies. “But we’ll have to put on clothes first.”

Yuuri pouts a little at that, but agrees readily, tugging at Viktor’s wrists as he leads him back upstairs to get new clothes for the day.

The family dacha had not always been one building; back in the seventies it had been three — the main building where people slept had been just the living room, and then there had been a separate building housing the kitchen, and the pavilion which became the covered porch. His parents and auntie had connected the buildings and added a second storey in the eighties, as well as modern plumbing and running water. The only holdover from the old days is the sauna in the backyard, which gets a lot more use in the winter.

Yuuri peers into the sauna with interest anyway, his eyes sparkling as he takes in the wooden interior. ‘Not so different from the one at Yu-Topia,’ he remarks.

“I prefer the one at Yu-Topia,” replies Viktor. “It’s a lot roomier, and you’re not expected to whack people with branches.”

‘That might get you kicked out back home,’ agrees Yuuri. He closes the door and looks around at the backyard itself, which is mostly comprised of garden. There are different plots for different vegetables, as well as flowers and fruit trees and shrubs. Viktor bends down, picks a strawberry, wipes it on his shirt, and offers it to Yuuri. The selkie leans in and eats it right from his fingers, tongue laving over the pad of Viktor’s thumb, and the look in his eyes sparks a line of heat to Viktor’s crotch.

“Yuuri, _please_ ,” he says. “If you keep doing stuff like this to me we’ll end up spending our entire honeymoon having sex. And I distinctly remember Yurio telling us not to do that.”

Yuuri chuckles at that, arching an eyebrow as if to say he’s seriously contemplating it, and why is Viktor thinking about Yurio on _their_ honeymoon?

Instead he asks, ‘What do you suggest we do instead?’

Viktor grins.

* * *

**Viktor Nikiforov** @ v-nikiforov  
Get someone who’ll look at you the way #yuurikatsuki looks at plants #blessed

* * *

The spray of water from the garden hose hits him like a bolt, and Yuuri gasps as the coldness hits his skin and drenches his shirt. He runs away, but the water chases him — Viktor has gotten his hands on the hose, and he is relentless.

The backyard of the dacha is screened from the view of the dirt road and the neighbours by hedges and trees, offering some semblance of privacy. Yuuri’s feet are muddy now as Viktor chases him through the vegetable plots; he doesn’t even want to know how many plants he’s trampled in an attempt to get some of the mud off his feet, he makes a dash for the grassy lawn leading to the banks of the lake.

Viktor follows him out there as well, though the hose has its limits, and Yuuri quickly dances out of the reach of the water. Viktor is laughing, his own hair and shirt dripping from when Yuuri first sprayed him. The sight of his chest through his white shirt causes Yuuri’s heart to race.

He runs towards Viktor and tackles him back onto the grass, catching the man by surprise. Viktor laughs as they roll around for a moment, tangled in a giggling mass of limbs, until finally Yuuri stops them so he can straddle Viktor’s lap and unbutton his own shirt.

Viktor’s breath visibly hitches as the shirt falls off Yuuri’s shoulders; his hands are on Yuuri’s waist in a moment, a cooling touch against Yuuri’s heated skin. Yuuri kisses him eagerly, giddier than a teenager with his first crush, and Viktor responds in kind. 

It’s a long while later when they finally clamber back up to the garden, Yuuri idly re-buttoning his shirt while Viktor tries to straighten his hair.

Viktor finds a bicycle propped up behind the sauna, and after a little cleaning and some more air in the tires, he gets it back into a rideable state. They decide to test it out that afternoon by riding it into town to get groceries. Yuuri pedals, while Viktor perches on the rack behind the seat, both of them laughing the entire way into town and eliciting strange looks from the locals.

Viktor navigates them to the little grocery store, and Yuuri stands guard over the bicycle outside while Viktor goes in to pick up some more food for their kitchen. He smiles at the people walking by with their dogs, at the little children and their parents passing by. People smile back at him as well, though they don’t stop to chat because he clearly looks foreign.

It’s fine, of course — he hadn’t expected them to roll out the welcome wagon for him. But the lack of Viktor beside him makes him all too aware of how much of a newcomer he is here. Had Viktor felt this way in Torvill? Granted, Viktor didn’t have to deal with a language barrier, but surely he had had to take some time to adjust to living in a small, sleepy seaside town after years of excitement in the city.

Yuuri wheels the bike over to a little bench just outside the grocery store where someone has tied up their dog, and takes a seat. The dog, an excitable little spaniel, licks at his hand when he offers it. Yuuri responds by petting it on the head.

The owner comes by a couple minutes later. She is a small girl with blond hair in pigtails, and she beams toothily at Yuuri before shooting off rapid-fire questions at him in Russian. Yuuri has to shake his head to let her know he doesn’t understand her; in turn, she shrugs, and asks in slow, halting English: “Do you like my dog?”

Yuuri nods.

The girl beams. “She is good,” she agrees, and the little spaniel wags its tail in agreement. Yuuri smiles and nods, watching the little girl untie the dog’s leash from the bench with a strange clench in his chest.

He’d thought about it once or twice, the idea of starting a family with Viktor, but it had been always been in the abstract, in the fantastical. But now that he and Viktor are each other’s present for the foreseeable future, the idea of starting a family doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it had in the days just before their reunion.

After all, they’re both successful authors now. They could afford it. Yuuri watches the little girl meet with her parents as they exit the grocery store with their bags; as they cross the road and vanish from sight, Yuuri can’t help but feel a little lonelier than he had before.

He’s considering heading in to see where Viktor is when his husband does emerge from the store, laden with bags of food and drinks.

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting for too long,” Viktor says by way of apology as he hangs two of the bags from the handlebars of the bike, seeing as they don’t have cords to tie anything onto the rack in the back.

‘No, I was distracted by a dog,’ Yuuri replies.

Viktor grins. “Was it cute?” he asks.

Yuuri nods, and Viktor beams.

“That’s good,” he says. “I’m sorry this place isn’t very exciting. It’s like a deader version of Torvill, to be honest.”

‘I think it’s interesting,’ replies Yuuri, gesturing around to the old buildings and houses. ‘Isn’t there supposed to be a fortress in this town?’

“Oh yeah,” says Viktor nodding. “We could visit it one of these days, if you want.”

Yuuri nods. ‘I’d like that,’ he agrees, watching Viktor heft the remaining grocery bags. ‘See, that’s something Torvill doesn’t have.’

Viktor laughs at that, and then gestures for Yuuri to lead the way back to the dacha.

* * *

The return trip is slower, of course, because now they have bags hanging from the handlebars, and Viktor is holding onto another set while Yuuri pushes the bike down the bumpy dirt roads.

For Viktor, stepping back into that grocery store had almost felt like being dragged back to his childhood, back to muggy summer days spent languishing in the aisles of the store because it was the only place in town with a working A/C. Now there’s so many more options on the shelves, all foods and drinks and commodities he’d never seen outside Saint Petersburg before.

It’s a testament to how much things have changed over time. Priozersk is a little more modern than he remembers — but then again, he’s changed, too. He’s married now, and his husband is pushing their bike down the road with that single-minded determination that he usually reserves for writing.

They pass by several dachas belonging to people whose children Viktor had spent summers playing with, so he tells Yuuri about them. About Rina, Pasha, and Tanya, and how they’d all clump together during church and make faces at the priests, or get into prank wars out of boredom which usually resulted in at least one kid getting punished for something destructive.

“…And that’s how Pasha ended up being chased through town by Baba Maria, who lives right there,” Viktor says as they passed by a small green building largely overgrown with vines. “You can still smell the cat litter if the wind blows just right. Pasha, on the other hand, couldn’t get the stench off himself for a week.”

Yuuri raises an eyebrow, his eyes sparkling with amusement. Viktor has to look away to try and remember the rest of his story. The sun is persistent and the air is thick with humidity, but all of that seems to fall away in the curve of Yuuri’s smile and the eagerness of his nods at all the right moments of the story.

“It seems pretty funny now, but Baba Maria was genuinely terrifying to us when we were younger,” Viktor muses, guiding Yuuri down a left turn with a hand at his back. “I remember tiptoeing past her dacha every day on the off chance she would be down here when I was.”

Yuuri pauses to lean the bike against his hip and reply, ‘That’s what some people do with the lighthouse in Torvill.’

Viktor laughs at that. “I guess Old Man Plisetsky can be intimidating if you don’t really know him,” he remarks.

Yuuri rolls his eyes. ‘Are you kidding? He intimidates people who know him, too!’

“Point,” Viktor concedes, and Yuuri picks up the bike and begins to wheel it down the road again. Viktor’s sure he had something to add, or another topic to change to, but all coherent thought flies out of his head halfway between the warmth of Yuuri’s eyes and the glimpse of smooth skin when the shirt he’s wearing rides up on his hips.

He might have spent too much time staring, because before they know it, their dacha is coming into view along the dirt road ahead, with the lake shimmering just beyond the trees. Yuuri parks the bike back behind the sauna, looking down at it with half a critical stare.

‘We should find a lock for this bike so that we can tie it up the next time we take it somewhere,’ he suggests. 

“I know exactly where to find one,” Viktor replies.

* * *

And that’s how Yuuri finds himself in the cellar of the dacha as the afternoon light fades into gold, flipping through an album of Viktor’s baby pictures with the man himself peering over his shoulder. They’d found a bike lock in the mess of storage boxes and trunks down here, but they’d also found a treasure trove of Nikiforov family mementos. Old clothes and books, letters and photographs — all of them have been tucked down here alongside a rack full of Moravian vintages.

“I was a messy kid,” Viktor laments as Yuuri giggles at a picture of him standing on a chair in nothing but a diaper, covered in some strange goopy baby food. It’s an adorable image, even if slightly disgusting, and Yuuri wonders what possessed baby Viktor to cover himself in his food like that.

‘You’ve seen my baby pictures; I was worse,’ he replies, remembering Hiroko showing Viktor photos of baby Yuuri protesting his bath by streaking through the hotel. Viktor had not stopped laughing until they were back at the cottage that night.

“You were also at one point in your life an adorable baby seal,” Viktor points out, and that was true — after Yuuri started transforming at seven, the Katsuki family album started to include photos of a juvenile seal splashing alongside a boat.

Viktor sneezes as Yuuri turns the page to another photo of him rolling in a mud puddle. Viktor had been a beaming child, though it seems that his smiles over the years have gotten less and less sincere.

At least, until now. The night before the wedding, Viktor’s mother had told him she’d “last seen Vitenka smiling like this when he was five, Yuuri, you really are good for him”, and just the thought of that — the thought of being able to make Viktor smile so brightly again —  makes his heart swell a little with pride.

Yuuri traces the picture of young Viktor, then, that familiar feeling of standing in a maelstrom suddenly sweeping him. Once again, seeing physical records of his husband’s past feels just a little too surreal. Slowly, he closes the album, sneezing when the dust hits him as well. Viktor laughs, and presses a kiss to the side of his head. Yuuri rubs at his nose.

‘Think Yurio would want to see your baby pictures?’ he wonders.

Viktor snorts. “Why are we talking about Yurio on our honeymoon?”

Yuuri raises an eyebrow. ‘You’re the one who brought him up first,’ he says, before turning for the stairs leading out of the cellar.

Viktor follows him back up with the bike lock in his hands. “That was because you were tempting me earlier,” he says. Yuuri raises an eyebrow at him, before crossing to the kitchen sink to wash his hands.

Viktor rests his hands on Yuuri’s waist, drawing him closer. Yuuri leans back, letting his husband rain soft kisses down his neck, before turning to push him away gently.

‘Who’s the tempting one now?’ he wonders, and Viktor flushes as bright as the strawberries that they had picked earlier in the morning. Yuuri laughs at that, and goes to wash and plate a couple for a snack out in the backyard.

Viktor follows him, and together they lie back in the grass with the lake breeze blowing gently against their faces. Out here, Yuuri commits to memory the sight of Viktor’s face glowing in dappled sunshine as he eats one of the strawberries. He only waits for Viktor to swallow, before clambering onto him to chase the taste of strawberry with his tongue.

Viktor pauses a little in between their kisses and looks around them, as if trying to make sure they’re alone. Frowning, Yuuri places his hands on both sides of Viktor’s face and guides him back to his lips, feeling the tension easing out of his husband’s frame as he remembers what he’s supposed to be doing. He licks up into Viktor’s mouth once more, and feels more than hears the moan bubbling against his lips.

Everything is slow and heady after that, a blur of sensation and emotion in Yuuri’s mind. Their hands clasped, their rings brushing, the exquisite sweetness in the press between their bodies — he is content to drown in Viktor’s arms, and Viktor seems just as content to hold him there.

It’s only later, when Yuuri is applying aloe vera to Viktor’s new bug bite collection on his ankles and legs, that he considers that maybe dry humping in the backyard isn’t such a good idea after all.

* * *

**Yuuri Katsuki** @ ykatsukiofficial  
#ladoga #priozersk #lakeladoga

* * *

On the second day, they go out on the lake. The dacha is within a short walk of a little dock, stretching out just past the reach of long cattails and reeds growing along the bank. Before they leave, though, Viktor puts a dozen skewers of lamb in a tub of marinade in the fridge, telling Yuuri they’ll be having shashlik for dinner, as per tradition.

Yuuri brings his sealskin with him down to the dock. He gets into the water before he removes his ring and strips off his swimming trunks. Wrapping himself more completely in the sealskin, he then vanishes beneath the surface — and though Viktor has seen this several times before, it still takes his breath away.

Katsudon resurfaces moments later, jumping up onto the dock and greeting Viktor with a whiskery kiss. Viktor laughs as he hugs the seal, only wincing slightly when he feels the seal’s claws scrape at his back.

Katsudon is ten times sleeker in the water than he is on land, and proves it to Viktor by racing him out past the nearest point. This lake is vast; from this shore it engulfs the horizon like the ocean. Some parts of it even have rideable surf.

Out here, Viktor is panting and paddling to stay afloat, but Katsudon is as energetic as ever, swimming circles around him and nudging him with his snout. Viktor suddenly wishes that he’d brought his diving equipment; he’d learnt how to dive a month or two after their reunion so that he could spend time in the sea with Katsudon. Yuuri had teased him mercilessly for weeks on end, saying that he was really doing it to write a novel about a diver, but then the selkie had also kissed him senseless when he transformed back after their first swim together, so Viktor’s sure he appreciated the gesture.

Still, right now he only has himself, and Katsudon is trying to tempt him into chasing him. He obliges, but only barely manages to capture the seal after a long while of paddling in circles. Katsudon ends up towing him all the way to the dock, and Viktor clambers back onto it with a sigh of relief.

He spreads out his towel here, making sure Yuuri’s trunks and ring have not been disturbed, and lies back with his head towards the water. The sun is shining, though it is framed by clouds, and there’s a gentle breeze in the rushes by the side of the dock. He listens to the splashing of the seal in the water next to him, and closes his eyes —

— only to feel a cold wet nose-bump against his hair moments later. Viktor squeaks, promptly rolling onto his stomach to face Katsudon, who is bobbing in the water right at the end of the dock, head tilted at him as if expecting Viktor to return to the water.

“I’m tired,” Viktor complains. “You tired me out. I’m not that good at swimming, you know.”

Katsudon twirls idly in the water. Viktor’s sure that means something to a selkie, but he’s not so sure what it means himself.

“In a moment,” he says.

If seals could pout, Katsudon is definitely doing it. It reminds him of Makkachin whenever Viktor withholds buns from him. He laughs a little at the comparison, shaking his head as Katsudon pulls a distinctly offended expression in response.

“Five minutes,” he suggests, and Katsudon acquiesces by leaping up and bumping him with his nose again. Viktor laughs, especially as he watches the seal porpoise out into the lake, and settles back for a short rest.

Five minutes turn into ten, turn into twenty, and half an hour quickly passes before Viktor opens his eyes again and finds Katsudon still gone. He frowns, scanning the lake for signs of the seal, but his eyes can only parse out so much. It’s a big lake, though. It’s easy to get lost.

(He doesn’t think about the time he himself got lost boating on this lake. He doesn’t think about the time he was convinced Tanya had drowned after a particularly inadvisable boating stunt.)

(Yuuri wouldn’t do any of that, especially not as Katsudon.)

(And yet, he worries.)

It’s a big lake. Katsudon will be back, soon. And Viktor could wheedle a boat out of someone if it comes down to that.

But he has no idea what to do if Katsudon doesn’t return. This isn’t Torvill Cove, where Yuuko Nishigori and her team at the Harbour Watch are just a phone call away. As far as he knows, the only biologists who come out to Lake Ladoga would not be interested in a missing harbour seal. Except to possibly arrest him for smuggling wildlife or something.

He’s about to call Meri to ask if she knows any local boat rental places when a familiar black head pops up in the water again, followed by another, less familiar head. Viktor blinks, but then grins as the two creatures get closer. It’s another seal, though probably of the local species. And the way Katsudon is interacting with it suggests they’re communicating somehow.

Viktor smiles, and lies back down on the dock to watch Katsudon and his new friend. He also takes a couple pictures, making a note to send them to Phichit the next time his signal kicks in.

It’s nearing dinnertime by the time Yuuri reappears, donning his ring almost as soon as the sealskin slips off his head. Viktor has long since changed back into regular clothes, and he meets Yuuri on the dock with his towel and a kiss.

“You should hang the sealskin to dry on the porch; we can string up a clothesline for it,” he suggests.

Yuuri nods at that, but then his stomach growls, and he flushes. Viktor laughs, and puts an arm around his husband’s waist.

“I’ve already gotten started on the shashlik,” he says as he steers them back towards the dacha, where the smell of grilling lamb is wafting towards them from the backyard. Yuuri licks his lips, and Viktor grins. “I’m sorry in advance if it smells better than it tastes, though — my grilling skills aren’t exactly my strongest suit.”

Yuuri chuckles. ‘I don’t recall marrying you for your grilling ability,’ he points out, kissing Viktor’s cheek and leaning into his side. Viktor’s stomach flips pleasantly, as they make their way to where the lamb skewers are cooking on the little grill.

Viktor hands Yuuri one of the already cooked ones, and watches him takes a bite. He raises an eyebrow, and Yuuri nods, flashes him a thumbs-up. Viktor grins, and the selkie rips into the rest with an almost animalistic ferocity.

“Didn’t get a chance to eat any fish?” he asks. Yuuri’s nose wrinkles and he shakes his head. He holds out the empty skewer, and Viktor gives him another one. Yuuri tears into that one as well, watching curiously as Viktor turns the meat currently on the grill.

Viktor waits until his husband has finished eating the second skewer before he asks, “How about the new seal — want to tell me more about them?”

Yuuri’s expression lights up at that, and he sets down the skewer so that he can recount his adventures. And as Viktor watches his husband describe the tour the other seal gave him around the lake, he can’t help but smile until his face hurts.

* * *

**Yuuri Katsuki** @ ykatsukiofficial  
#valaam #valaammonastery

* * *

Yuuri doesn’t see the Ladoga ringed seal again, not even amongst the other ringed seals hauled out on the rocks of Valaam when he and Viktor take the ferry there to visit the monastery.

Valaam is a quiet little town comprised of mostly monks and families, with a small art and sports complex, a museum, and a couple small cafés and bookshops. In a way, it reminds him of Torvill Cove, with its charming buildings surrounded by pristine nature and the endless expanse of the lake.

He points this out to Viktor as they follow a group of tourists up to the Saviour Transfiguration Cathedral, the main cathedral in the monastery. Apparently, there are numerous other smaller churches and chapels scattered throughout the island, with a couple more on neighbouring isles as well. Yuuri is curious about all of them, of course, but he knows he won’t be able to get to all of them in one day. Plus, Viktor had pulled that infamous placid smile when Yuuri had brought up the idea of visiting all of the churches, so he had dropped it immediately.

They’d settled on seeing the Saviour Transfiguration Cathedral, then, as well as the surrounding town. Yuuri takes photos from as many angles as he can, uploading the results to the public relations account his publishers had set up for him. Viktor, on the other hand, takes no photos of the cathedral — Yuuri has noticed most of his husband’s Instagram posts have been of just him, with the background left extremely vague in terms of location. Similarly, here he takes a photo of Yuuri with barely any indication of a cathedral in the background.

Viktor fidgets a little as Yuuri takes one more photo to upload to their group chat back in Torvill. “Let’s hurry a little,” he suggests, “or we’ll miss the singing.”

The cathedral sanctuary is gorgeous, as expected, with mosaics and giltwork lining the ceiling and the walls. Yuuri sits in one of the pews and takes it all in; Viktor sits with him, pressing kisses into his shoulder as they sit and watch the tourists go by.

The sound of chanting fills the air; the monastery choir is performing near the altar. It’s five men, robed plainly, expressing their love of God through song. Yuuri leans his head against Viktor’s shoulder and closes his eyes, letting the words which he doesn’t understand flow through his mind like the tides.

Viktor’s fingers find his and entwine, before slowly moving them from his lap to the inseam of his jeans. Yuuri feels his cheeks heat up as the pads of Viktor’s fingers brush against his inner thigh. Surely there must be a time and place? But Viktor’s eyes dance mischievously in response to Yuuri’s glaring, and his hands still right where they are — just innocuous enough that passerby won’t think much of it, but just loaded enough to set Yuuri’s mind wandering down paths unsuitable for the current environment.

“Every day I spend with you is like being in heaven,” Viktor teases in a low voice as they watch the choir continue to perform. Yuuri feels the heat in his cheeks spreading at the thought, and he squeezes Viktor’s hand in response. Trust his husband to say such embarrassingly corny things in public.

He moves their hands a moment later, and leans his head on Viktor’s shoulder. This tranquillity lasts only for a moment, though, because that smile creeps back on Viktor’s face and he moves his hand closer to the inside of his own thighs. Yuuri inhales. Viktor chuckles.

After the piece is done, Yuuri rises and tugs Viktor out of the cathedral, getting as far as out past the gates before he turns to him and demands, ‘Time and place, Viktor?’ And he really doesn’t mean for Viktor to blanche slightly at the ferocity of his signs, so he sighs, and starts over. ‘Surely you can think of better places to tease me than in a church.’

Viktor sighs as well, rubbing at the back of his head with a wry chuckle. “You’re right,” he concedes. “We should go home, then,” he adds, with a perky grin that immediately arouses Yuuri’s suspicions.

‘You really don’t like this place, do you?’ he asks.

Viktor shrugs. “Familiarity breeds contempt?” he wonders. “I’m sorry. I’ve been to that cathedral too many times when I was a kid. I got bored.”

Yuuri shakes his head, and leans in to kiss his cheek. ‘Well, I hope you’ll never treat me like that cathedral,’ he replies.

Viktor splutters. “That’ll never happen,” he says, his voice slightly disbelieving, as if he’s offended Yuuri would even think of such a thing.

But he has, more times than he cares to recount. Even up until the day of the wedding sometimes he’d dream of waking up to find Viktor gone again. He’d moved mountains to get them to reunite; what if someday mountains weren’t enough?

Those thoughts must have shown on his face, because Viktor’s brows crinkle in concern. “Do you want to know why that’ll never happen?” he asks, as he starts to guide them to the dock.

Yuuri nods.

Viktor smiles, slipping an arm around his waist and kissing his forehead. “Because being with you is a never-ending chain of surprises,” he replies, and this time Yuuri kisses him on the lips.

* * *

They don’t end up spending too much time in Valaam, much to Viktor’s relief. After their tour of the monastery, they grab a quick bite to eat in one of the cafés in town before rushing to catch the next ferry back to Priozersk.

Earlier in the morning, Yuuri had mentioned that Valaam had felt like Torvill: quiet yet beautiful, sporting a close-knit community against the backdrop of breathtaking natural beauty. Viktor can see the logic in the argument, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with it. Torvill Cove had brought him Yuuri, had given him countless reasons to believe in magic again. Valaam, on the other hand, had been nothing more than the destination of numerous early-morning excursions, often done because the most interesting thing happening that day had been the sermon at the cathedral. It’s simply not the same.

The breeze kicked up by the ferry whips at Yuuri’s hair now as they make their way back across the lake. The selkie seems preoccupied somehow, eyes darting around to look at the other passengers. Viktor clasps their hands, resting them on the inside of Yuuri’s lap, and chuckles when Yuuri blushes and startles at the touch. He is pure temptation in this moment, brown eyes sparkling warmly in the afternoon light, and Viktor would like nothing more than to reach out and kiss him senseless.

But he doesn’t — he had promised to behave, and behave he shall — at least, until the doors of the dacha close behind them. Once back in the privacy of the dacha, all bets are off.

It’s still a little strange for Viktor to not only have the place to himself, but also to be here with someone he’s regularly sleeping with. When he had been younger, there had never been any privacy for him. The dacha had been simultaneously an experience in a family-run panopticon and an escape from worse things back in Saint Petersburg. Even as Yuuri presses him against the entryway with a knee between his legs, Viktor has to pause and look around in an attempt to make sure they’re not being watched.

Yuuri kisses a wet trail down Viktor’s neck, his hands coming to tangle in Viktor’s hair. Viktor can’t help but laugh at that, though his teasing quip about Yuuri’s impatience only earns him a growl and a decidedly rough yank over to the stairs.

The steps dig into Viktor’s back as Yuuri grinds against him on it, panting into his ear as he chases release. In return, Viktor takes them both in hand, pumping at their cocks until he is blinking stars from his vision. One of Yuuri’s hands comes back around Viktor’s head, briefly brushing against the bite mark from the first night.

He freezes at that, and Viktor notices, his hand stilling as he frowns at his husband. “Something wrong?” he asks.

Yuuri reaches out, tracing his finger along the bite mark at Viktor’s nape. Viktor had almost forgotten about that; he makes a small ‘ah’ of recognition and then begins to idly trace a line down Yuuri’s hipbone.

“It’s healing just fine,” he says. “And it doesn’t hurt. I mean, it hurt when you first bit me, but now it doesn’t really hurt anymore.”

Yuuri still looks unconvinced, though, worrying at his lip as he traces the bite mark again, and the sight of that wrings at Viktor’s heart a little. Yuuri should not ever have to feel bad about something that Viktor had actually _enjoyed_ , and he tells him as much. This earns him a little huff, a little nibble at his earlobe. A moan escapes Viktor before he can control himself, but at least this has the half-intended effect of returning the rosy flush to Yuuri’s cheeks.

 _Maybe I’m not the only one_ , Viktor thinks wildly, _who needs to readjust to being loved so completely by someone else_. Yuuri has his qualms, his own reservations, and Viktor can at least take care to make sure his own do not clash with them. So he swallows back thoughts of being caught, of prying cousins and teasing voices, and captures Yuuri’s lips once more.

He then reaches for Yuuri’s cock, and the moment his hand wraps around both of them, all thoughts and worries fly out of his head along with the rest of his blood.

* * *

**Viktor Nikiforov** @ v-nikiforov  
Do you ever see someone so beautiful that you just start crying? #yuurikatsuki #blessed

* * *

The next time they head down to the lake, Yuuri doesn’t bring his sealskin. Instead, he wears a white t-shirt over his swimming trunks, and Viktor almost wants to push him into the lake just to watch the translucent cloth cling to his chest.

But he doesn’t, and in turn he’s rewarded with Yuuri pulling his shirt over his head once they hit the dock, flinging the garment to the wooden planks as if it had personally offended him. Viktor can’t help but laugh at that, though the laughter dies in his throat when Yuuri turns to him and tilts his head, as if asking him why he’s not following suit.

Viktor obliges him, removing his own shirt and stooping to pick Yuuri’s up as the selkie dives off the end of the pier into the sparkling waters of the lake. Viktor dangles his feet over the edge for a moment before he sets down their shirts and towels, and slides into the water after his husband.

Swimming with Yuuri in human form is fairly rare, but Viktor treasures the moments anyway, mostly because they’re the only times when he can outrace Yuuri in the water. It’s terribly entertaining, watching Yuuri doggy paddle after him with frustration crinkling at his brow. It takes several rounds past the point and back before Yuuri concedes defeat, floating on his back past Viktor with a pout on his face.

‘If I were a seal right now, I’d beat you,’ he says.

Viktor coos at the petulance in his husband’s expression. “Well, aren’t you a sore loser,” he chirps. “Are you sure you don’t want to get your skin?”

Yuuri’s face scrunches up, as if he’s calculating the amount of effort it would take to get out of the water, return to the dacha, and fetch it from where it’d been left on the porch. He shakes his head.

Viktor chuckles, and lies back in the water to watch the clouds float by. The sound of the world falls away under the water; all he hears is his own breathing and the beat of his heart. He closes his eyes and lets himself drift, thinking about the whirlwind that had been their lives since their reunion. It had taken them a while to rebuild the intimacy between them, but this second chance with Yuuri has been and continues to be well worth the effort on Viktor’s part.

Still, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t wonder if, even now, there are things the selkie is holding back. Not that it’s his place to pry — he did that, once, and he still sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night from the memories of it, seized with the overwhelming emptiness of his heart during those months without Yuuri.

A sudden splash brings him back to the present. He barely has time to splutter before Yuuri is tackling him into the water. The selkie clings to him; Viktor has to tread a little harder to keep them both afloat.

He paddles them back towards the dock, to where the water only goes waist-high. Goosebumps rise on Yuuri’s skin when they surface, but Viktor wraps an arm around him and holds him close, tracing the line of his jaw with one finger before capturing his lips.

Yuuri slips one hand past the waistband of Viktor’s trunks, then, and squeezes at his ass. Viktor laughs into the kiss, his own hands clutching at Yuuri’s shoulder blades. Even though their bodies are pressed as close together as they could possibly be, part of him still craves _more_ — craves to be rejoined to Yuuri, for Yuuri to be rejoined to him.

Yuuri’s lips are red, kiss-swollen when Viktor breaks the kiss for air. He gasps as Viktor kisses the juncture between his neck and shoulder, as he runs his tongue across wet sun-kissed skin and tastes him. But just as Viktor moves his lips down to Yuuri’s sternum, he hears a grumbling in the selkie’s stomach, and laughs as Yuuri visibly winces at the interruption.

“I’ll go grab a snack for us,” Viktor suggests, and barely sees Yuuri’s nod before he’s heading for the dock. Back at the dacha, he fills a container with freshly-picked strawberries, and heads back down to the dock where Yuuri is bobbing at the end like a mermaid. When Yuuri hauls himself out onto the dock and shakes the water from his hair, Viktor has to remember how to breathe.

Wordlessly, he holds out the strawberries, not sure if he trusts his ability to form coherent words just yet. Yuuri beams at him, his brown eyes sparkling, and kisses the inside of his wrist as he takes the berries out of his hands.

Viktor’s stomach does a quad flip. It does another when Yuuri pushes him onto the wood and straddles him, and another as Yuuri presses a strawberry to his lips. He acquiesces to the treat, chuckling a little at the flush in Yuuri’s cheeks when he bites into the strawberry and lets the juice run down the corners of his lips.

His swimming trunks feel a lot tighter now, and the discomfort only gets worse when Yuuri flicks his tongue against the tip of another berry before slowly popping it into his mouth. It never ceases to amaze him just how easily Yuuri can turn something as innocuous as eating strawberries into the ultimate test of Viktor’s self-control.

Not that he has much to begin with, when it concerns Yuuri. Viktor opens his mouth for another berry, his fingers now lightly skimming up the legs of Yuuri’s swimming trunks to play with the drawstring.

Yuuri bucks lightly against him, and though Viktor initially freezes, craning his head to make sure they’re truly alone, his attention quickly returns to the matter at hand. He bites off a groan around his strawberry at the sweet friction between their hips, and then tugs at the string until it comes undone. Looking up, Viktor quirks an eyebrow, and Yuuri nods, his own hand stilled halfway to the container of berries.

Viktor pulls down the waistband, then, and frees Yuuri’s cock, stroking long and gentle along the shaft until it hardens fully beneath him. At the touch, Yuuri’s eyes flutter closed, his hands going limp and useless at his sides. In turn, Viktor admires the flush running up Yuuri’s chest as he continues to stroke, smearing a bead of pre-come around the tip before popping his finger into his mouth and savouring Yuuri’s taste.

Part of him is still half-convinced this is a dream. That this, alongside every other moment since their reunion, will all vanish in a blink if he isn’t careful enough. Yuuri is here with him now, beautiful in the sunlight as he shallowly thrusts into Viktor’s hand, but what if he messes up again? What if he hurts Yuuri, and drives him away for good?

He’s torn out of his musings, however briefly, by the press of Yuuri’s hand against his cheek. The selkie’s gaze is questioning; Viktor feels shame welling up in him at his distraction, and he flicks his wrist in an attempt to distract Yuuri from it.

Somehow, it works — Yuuri’s breath hitches and he relaxes back into Viktor’s touch, leaning down to capture his lips in a kiss as Viktor coaxes him to climax. They wash off the mess in the lake, though that quickly becomes a futile gesture when Yuuri slips a hand into his swimming trunks and returns the favour.

The remaining strawberries lie out on the dock, forgotten until Yuuri sees a couple bugs hovering around them and launches himself back onto the dock to try and swat them away. Viktor can’t help but laugh at that, though the laughter dies in his throat when Yuuri returns with the salvaged strawberries and tries to get him to finish them off.

 _If this is a dream,_ Viktor thinks, as Yuuri chases the taste of strawberry in his mouth, _then let me never wake up._

* * *

**Yuuri Katsuki** @ ykatsukiofficial  
#korelafortress #priozersk

* * *

Yuuri likes the fortress in Priozersk. It has cannons, and demonstrations on how to use them. Viktor takes lots of photos of the rooms full of weaponry, and jokes that he’ll probably use some of them in their next novel.

Yuuri also likes the café where they stop to get lunch. The sandwich is a bit small, but the soup is hearty, and there’s a glass of cold kompot to wash all of it down. Viktor has a glass of kvass with his own lunch, though he doesn’t seem to be enjoying it as much.

They walk hand-in-hand through the town in the afternoon, window-shopping for souvenirs. Yuuri sees a matryoshka with a cat painted on it, and points it out to Viktor as a possible gift for Yurio. Viktor gets it immediately.

It’s only the penultimate day of their honeymoon, and already Yuuri is dreading leaving the town. In the long run, settling down here isn’t exactly feasible — they’d be even farther from Yakov and Lilia, for one, and the town seems sleepier than even Torvill Cove, for another.

Still, there’s a reason a dacha is supposed to be a country escape from the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s quiet out here in their little cottage with the vegetable garden and the lake — almost like their little cottage by the sea back home on Torvill. It’s just the sort of space they needed in order to escape the whirlwind their lives had become. The fact that he also got to peek into one of Viktor’s childhood haunts along the way is only a plus.

Viktor takes him into a chocolate store, and says something in rapid-fire Russian that Yuuri can’t even begin to hope to understand. He hangs back, smiling at the little girl eating a slice of cake by the window, and watches the clerk wrap a box of chocolates for his husband. The little girl’s eyes sparkle as she looks at him through a mouthful of cake, and Yuuri remembers again that same tightness in his chest that he had felt when he saw a different little girl on their first full day in this town.

“Something on your mind, love?” Viktor asks as he hands him the bag with the box of chocolates. Yuuri takes it with a smile as they head out of the store for the walk back home, and shrugs.

Yuuri’s in charge of dinner tonight, and he’s planning to attempt blini. Viktor had woken up this morning with a craving for them, so Yuuri had found a recipe with ingredients that they currently have in their kitchen. He starts on it as soon as they’re back at the dacha, because according to the recipe, the batter has to sit for hours before use.

And while making batter for blini might not exactly be rocket science, things do tend to get a little more complicated when one factors in an overly affectionate husband. Yuuri knows Viktor means well, _really_ , but it’s extremely difficult to concentrate on separating eggs while Viktor is pressing kisses to the nape of his neck.

His hands shake a little when he feels Viktor’s fingers against his waist, his nose brushing against his hair. It’s good, but distractingly so, and Yuuri really wants to get this right. He tosses aside the last eggshell, and moves to whisk the flour into the yeast mixture currently foaming in the big mixing bowl by the sink.

As soon as Yuuri finishes mixing in the flour, he feels Viktor’s hands on his shoulders, and freezes. Viktor’s hands pause for a moment, hesitant, before starting to knead at the knots in his shoulders; Yuuri sighs and relaxes into his husband’s touch, careful not to disturb the bowl of batter.

“You seem upset,” Viktor remarks after a moment.

Yuuri turns, quirks an eyebrow at him. ‘Why would you think that?’ he wonders.

“You’re quieter than usual.”

Yuuri snorts. ‘I can’t talk,’ he points out drily.

Viktor shifts a little. “I just know it’s a different kind of quiet than what I’m used to,” he says, and pulls him closer. “Want to talk about it?”

Yuuri frowns. ‘I’m cooking.’

“That batter needs to rise,” Viktor points out. “You have time.”

Yuuri sighs. ‘Fine,’ he says.

Viktor blinks, a little taken aback, and then he takes a step towards the dining room. Yuuri follows him, taking a seat at the table next to him and folding his hands in his lap.

‘Well?’ Yuuri wonders after a moment, studying Viktor’s face. He seems a little discomfited; he’s now twiddling at his fingers and looking down at the wood grain of the table. Yuuri waits a moment longer, before asking, ‘didn’t you want to talk about something?’

“Your signs seem angry,” Viktor says after a moment. “Are you mad at me?”

Yuuri blinks. ‘Why would I be mad at you?’

Viktor shrugs, his gaze unnaturally fixed to the table. “I don’t know; why _do_ people get mad?” It’s clearly a rhetorical question, but there’s a melancholy in Viktor’s face that makes Yuuri’s stomach turn.

He reaches out, pats Viktor’s hand. ‘You were being distracting, Viktor, but I’m not mad, I swear.’

Viktor says nothing, still looking down at the table as if he’d like to bore a hole through it. “I didn’t mean to be a distraction,” he mumbles, like a chastised child. “You looked so beautiful in the light and I didn’t really think, and —”

Yuuri silences him with a finger to his mouth. ‘Viktor, be truthful. You didn’t want to come up here.’

Viktor squirms at that. “You’d never been up here,” he says after a moment, “and Mama offered so nicely, and it’s not a bad place to get away from everything. I mean, it’s not Tahiti or a Japanese onsen or Barcelona, but —”

Yuuri shushes him with a smile. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘But you still didn’t want to come here.’

“It wasn’t fair that I got to see your entire life in Torvill and not be able to share my own,” Viktor blurts.

Yuuri raises an eyebrow. In all honesty, he had expected an answer like this. Leave it to Viktor — his kind, thoughtful husband who still seems convinced he doesn’t deserve Yuuri — to think about reciprocity at the cost of returning to bad memories.

‘You didn’t have to take us here,’ he points out. ‘We could have gone anywhere in the world. I don’t care about the location — I care about _you_.’ He reaches out, takes Viktor’s hand and kisses his ring, before adding, ‘I’m sorry if it looked like I got mad at you at Valaam, or just now. I’m really not mad at all, I promise.’

Viktor worries at his bottom lip, still tracing the wood grain of the table. “It wasn’t all bad here, you know,” he says after a moment. “I loved this place sometimes. It was the one place the nannies couldn’t follow me, even if it meant sharing a room and never having a moment to myself. And I swear, my childhood isn’t anywhere near the level of tragic I’ve made it out to be —” but he cuts off, looking up at Yuuri with wide eyes, as if looking for his approval, and Yuuri’s not sure if he can do anything other than smile and nod.

‘You don’t need to justify it,’ he says. ‘I am honoured you decided to bring me here at all.’

“We should have come up here earlier,” laments Viktor. “I’m sorry our schedules didn’t let that work out.”

‘Why are you apologising for that?’ wonders Yuuri, confused. ‘We were too busy.’ Busy with writing, busy with the media surrounding their writing, busy with wedding planning — the entire world had been demanding their attention for the past two years, and this has been the first time in a long time that Yuuri had felt like he could properly _breathe_ at last. ‘Would you have wanted a vacation where we had an itinerary of places to go and things to do? It would have been busy and fun, but then we wouldn’t have had all the time in the world for each other.’

It takes a moment for Viktor to read all of his signs, but when he does, his eyes seem to get a little shinier than before. He blinks rapidly, once, twice, and then he leans across the table to kiss Yuuri in that slow, deliberate way that never fails to rob him of his breath.

“You make me believe in magic again,” Viktor breathes when they break apart, and Yuuri feels his face flush at that.

He then looks over at the mixing bowl, and promptly leaps out of his chair. Viktor follows, and this time his hand is just a gentle presence at Yuuri’s side as he prepares the rest of the batter.

The blini turns out pretty well for a first attempt, though Yuuri suspects that part of it is due to the fact that any failings in the flavour of the pancake itself can be completely obscured by sour cream and caviar. Viktor declares it delicious, though Viktor’s opinion of his cooking is probably as skewed by their relationship as ever. Yuuri’s pretty sure he could accidentally serve burnt toast and Viktor would try to give it Michelin stars.

After dinner, they head out to the covered porch to enjoy the warm summer night. Viktor lights a bug repellent candle on the table, though the screens on the sides of the porch do most of the heavy lifting. Yuuri curls up in Viktor’s lap, resting his head in the crook of his neck and listening to his breathing.

He’s almost dancing at the edge of sleep when he feels Viktor’s hand on his knee and Viktor’s lips against the top of his head. Something stirs in him at the touch; he makes a contented grumble and Viktor’s hand grows a little bolder as it moves up his thigh.

‘Viktor,’ Yuuri muses, ‘do you think we have too much sex?’

The hand stills. “What?” wonders his husband.

‘Maybe I’m just comparing it to what we’ve done in Torvill, but we’ve been having a lot of sex lately.’ Yuuri’s sure his signs are a bit slurred in his half-dreamlike state, and it does take Viktor a long while to figure out what he’s saying.

“You… think we’re having a lot more sex here than in Torvill?’ he asks. Yuuri nods. Viktor hums thoughtfully at that. “Well, it _is_ the point of a honeymoon.”

‘Spending time together is the point of a honeymoon,’ Yuuri points out.

“Okay, sure, but when’s the last time we had this amount of time to focus on nothing but each other?” Viktor presses a kiss to his forehead. “Can you blame me for thinking that focusing on you means focusing on pleasing you?”

Yuuri huffs. ‘I’m not faulting you for anything,’ he says. ‘I just —’ and he pauses to scratch at a bug bite that’s been tormenting his ankle, remembering suddenly the number of bug bites Viktor had sustained that one time they tried to make love in the garden. Every single encounter between the two of them thus far has had a mishap of some kind, and he’s probably pondered over them a lot more than he’s willing to confess.

“Yuuri?” asks Viktor, pressing a kiss to his temple.

Yuuri leans into it, closing his eyes. ‘Maybe it’s just me worrying again,’ he says after a moment. ‘Sorry. Forget I said anything.’

“ _Yuuri_ ,” insists his husband, in that tone of voice that never fails to spark something warm and curling in Yuuri’s stomach. “This honeymoon is for both of us, you know. I want to know what’s on your mind.”

Yuuri sighs. It takes him a couple minutes to collect his thoughts. ‘You didn’t want to come up here because of the bad memories,’ he says after a moment, his signs hesitant at first, but Viktor says nothing, so he continues. ‘So, I was just wondering if you had been paying attention during this honeymoon at all.’

“Paying attention?” echoes Viktor.

‘Well, if you had been, then wouldn’t you have been making new memories with me? Adding new, good ones on top of all the bad?’

Viktor is silent for a moment. Yuuri rests his head on Viktor’s shoulder, content to listen to the sound of his breathing. After a moment, Viktor shifts to lie down on the daybed, and Yuuri sprawls with him, tangling their legs and bodies together while idly tracing the shape of Viktor’s cupid-bow lips.

“I have been,” Viktor says after a moment. “I’ve made so many good memories with you this past week. And I want to keep making more. Isn’t that what marriage is about?”

‘I hope so,’ agrees Yuuri vehemently. He thinks about his own hang-ups, and adds, ‘maybe we should both stop thinking about the past and focus on what’s in front of us.’

Viktor hums at that, one finger tracing the shell of Yuuri’s ear. Yuuri leans up and kisses him, one finger slipping below the hem of Viktor’s shirt to tease at his hipbone. Viktor’s breath hitches, and Yuuri’s own heart skips a beat at the sound.

“H — How do you plan we do that?” Viktor asks after a moment, his voice half-strangled.

Yuuri smiles. ‘Fuck me like it’s your last night on earth,’ he replies.

Viktor takes a moment, both to read him and to ponder his words. And then he leans in and kisses him, his lips barely a whisper against Yuuri’s own, and smiles.

“As you wish,” he breathes, and Yuuri’s toes curl in anticipation.

* * *

**Viktor Nikiforov** @ v-nikiforov  
[flower emojis] #yuurikatsuki #blessed

* * *

On their last full day at the dacha, Viktor wakes up early. Yuuri’s words still echo in his mind as he makes them both a light breakfast as well as a picnic lunch. While the bread is toasting and the kettle is boiling, he digs out a basket from the cellar along with a bottle of wine, and packs it with some sandwiches, fruit, and an old blanket to sit on. When breakfast is ready, he arranges the toast and tea as nicely as he can on a small eat-up tray, and brings it upstairs to Yuuri.

His husband is still slumbering when he enters their bedroom, beautiful and soft against the sheets. For a moment, Viktor is hesitant about waking him; he sets the tray to the side and just watches, admiring the slow rise and fall of Yuuri’s chest in his slumber.

A couple strands of Yuuri’s hair fall in his eyes, so Viktor reaches out to push them back. The selkie stirs beneath his touch, dark eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

“Good morning,” Viktor offers, taking the tray and setting it on Yuuri’s lap once he pulls himself into a sitting position. “I made you a little toast with some of my mother’s preserves, and some tea. Want me to pour it for you?”

Yuuri nods, so Viktor pours him a cup from the little teapot, stirring in a little sugar and milk just the way he knows Yuuri takes it. Yuuri’s smile makes the effort worthwhile, though Viktor has to sit on his hands to keep himself from touching his husband as he watches him eat.

It’s only after Yuuri has drunk the last of the tea when he looks up and asks about what they’re doing today, and Viktor’s only response is leaning in to kiss him. He chases the taste of tea and berries, feeling a shiver down his spine when he hears Yuuri sigh into the kiss, and only pulls away when Yuuri gently pushes him back.

“I’ve got plans,” he says, taking Yuuri’s hand and kissing the golden ring shining on his finger. “I hope you’ll like them.”

An hour later, they find themselves flying down the dirt path on the bike, the picnic basket bumping wildly behind them. Yuuri rides on the handlebars, his hair blowing in the wind as Viktor pedals them past the town and along the side of the road that winds itself around the lake.

Yuuri waves at each car that passes by on this badly-paved country road, and sometimes they wave back, heading out to unknown destinations along the Russian or the Karelian sides of the lake. The waters sparkle jewel-bright along each turn in the road, and they pass along other dachas and farms until Viktor finds the turn he’s looking for, and veers away from the lake in order to head down a path winding through fields and farmland.

‘Have you been here before?’ Yuuri wonders when Viktor stops the bike by a small pond just next to a field of sunflowers. The pasture the field lies in is dotted with wildflowers, too, bursting forth in a myriad of summer colours.

Viktor laughs, shakes his head. “I asked Meri about a good picnic place, and she suggested this one. This is a new memory for the two of us alone.”

Yuuri’s eyes sparkle at that, and he leans up to kiss Viktor’s cheek before they park the bike next to the tall proud stalks of sunflowers. Viktor spreads out the blanket on the grass between the field and the pond, and Yuuri lays out the lunch, pouring Viktor a glass of wine as he kicks off his shoes and socks to soak his feet in the pond.

The water is cool and the wine is sweet, but Yuuri is better than both combined as he rests his head in Viktor’s lap, soft and intimate. Viktor cards his fingers through the selkie’s hair and Yuuri blossoms into the touch, soft contented sighs escaping his lips as Viktor presses against sensitive spots on his scalp.

He’d never thought he’d value the silence so much as he does now, listening to the cadence of Yuuri’s breathing and reading the language of his fingers. Yuuri points out the shapes in the clouds above, muses over the types of creatures making noises in the nearby trees and fields. Viktor, in turn, learns new words, eagerly repeating each sign after Yuuri just to watch the selkie’s eyes dance.

They eat their lunch in this same warm companionship, washed down with glasses of sweet, heady wine. In this state, Yuuri’s lips taste twice as intoxicating, making Viktor’s heart race and head spin in a way that he’s sure shouldn’t be happening to him after only two glasses. His hands briefly toy with the buttons on Yuuri’s shirt, but Yuuri smacks them away lightly, rising to his feet with just a little swaying.

‘Not now,’ he suggests, his signs slipping only just a little. Viktor nods, though it’s hard for him to pull back, hard for him to let Yuuri clamber to his feet and step away from him.

The banks of the pond are strewn with wildflowers and reeds and filled with the sound of insects and frogs. Yuuri takes off his socks and shoes and begins to climb along the bank, gathering bundles of cornflowers and lupines, dogroses and chamomile. When he returns to the blanket, his feet are muddy and his arms are laden with flowers which he sets down and begins to weave together into a pair of garlands.

“Where did you learn to do that?” wonders Viktor.

Yuuri sets down his current strand and replies, ‘Mari and I would do these when we went on family outings, to pass the time while hiking.’

Viktor hums thoughtfully, watching Yuuri continue to wrap the flowers together in sprays of blue, pink and white. Imagining a younger Yuuri learning how to make the garlands brings a smile to his face, and he leans in to wrap his arms around Yuuri’s midsection.

“Can I help?” he wonders. Yuuri shakes his head, but he turns and sets the garland across Viktor’s brows to judge his progress.

So, Viktor sits back and watches him work. He pours them both some wine, feeling the pull of exhaustion at his eyelids as he finishes his glass. Perhaps it’s the wine, perhaps it’s Yuuri, or some marvellous combination of the two, but right now his head feels light and his heart feels lighter, dizzy and captivated in turn by the intoxicating presence of his love.

He’s not sure when he falls asleep, but it feels like seconds later Yuuri is nudging him, the grogginess seeping from his eyes and his body as he wakes. The sky is darker now, brilliant blue obscured by grey clouds, and the crisper breeze now blowing in their hair makes the reeds sing brighter than before.

‘We should head back,’ Yuuri suggests, looking down at Viktor with his soft eyes and smile, and part of Viktor wants to protest, wants to linger out here longer. But the crying of the birds and the shiver in Yuuri’s frame at the feel of the wind makes him spring to action, helping his husband clean up their picnic and fold up the blanket to fit in the basket.

Yuuri has finished the garlands, at least, a spray of delicate blossoms now resting against his temples. He crowns Viktor with the other one, pulling him in for a kiss once they’re ready to leave, and Viktor’s stomach swoops like he’s on the Ferris wheel in Torvill Cove and Yuuri is kissing him for the first time all over again.

The ride back to Priozersk is slowed by the wind, now blowing harder with the darkening clouds. The air feels thick with the promise of a summer rainstorm, and all Viktor hopes is that they make it into town before it hits. Sure enough, the first fat drops of the storm begin to fall once they hit the main road of the town, and the rest fall in rapid succession, escalating to sheets of water by the time they’re rolling down the now-muddy paths towards the dacha.

Despite the ferocity of the rain and winds, despite the fact that he’s soaked to the bone and splattered with mud, Viktor feels full to bursting with a light happiness that only brightens at the smile on Yuuri’s face. The selkie is laughing as they park the bike by the sauna; for a moment, the picnic basket tied to the back is forgotten as Yuuri takes his hand and spins him out across the rain-soaked grass in the backyard.

Viktor is suddenly reminded of their first winter together, of being caught in the first snow in Torvill and marvelling at the way the flakes cling to Yuuri’s eyelashes. He’s reminded of their first autumn, of walking hand-in-hand through the leaves and braving the colder winds with Yuuri burrowed into his side. Yuuri dips him now, in their little dance, and Viktor is reminded of a warm spring evening out on the patio behind the cottage, and a mead-drunk Yuuri trying to teach him a cèilidh only for the two to collapse onto each other, breathless with laughter.

It’s easy to forget the little things, as the years go by — easy to assume that every day could still somehow feel like borrowed time and temporary happiness. But when Yuuri hefts him into his arms, solid and reassuring and _there_ , Viktor forgets the fears and the doubts for a while, and is content to just _be_.

They remember the basket once Yuuri sets Viktor down over the threshold of the dacha. Viktor has to dart back out and bring it in, and he is greeted with Yuuri’s amused expression as he sheepishly closes the screen door behind him and wipes off the extra mud on his shoes.

‘What’s the point of me carrying you in here if you’re just going to go back out again?’ wonders Yuuri as Viktor sets the basket on the dining room table. Viktor laughs at that, kicking off his shoes before stepping closer to Yuuri, before taking off his rain-splattered glasses, and tucking a couple wet strands of hair out of his eyes.

His breath comes short; every squeeze of his heart seems steadily more and more painful the longer he stands here and looks at Yuuri, takes him in all his rain-swept glory. Yuuri raises a questioning eyebrow at him and Viktor’s mouth goes dry in response; swallowing heavily, he leans in closer and wonders if that pounding he hears is his own heart, or Yuuri’s.

Yuuri exhales, soft and longing-filled, and Viktor can’t take it any longer.

He closes the distance between them, his lips oddly bashful as they brush against Yuuri’s. The selkie lets them linger like this for a breath longer, before growling low in his chest (and damn if that doesn’t spark a direct line to Viktor’s crotch) and tangling his fingers in Viktor’s hair to crush their lips more firmly together.

“We should get out of these clothes before we catch our death of cold,” suggests Viktor when they briefly break for air, and he feels the acquiescing curve of Yuuri’s smile in reply.

Together they stumble upstairs, hands and lips hardly standing to be apart for more than minutes at a time. Their drenched clothes litter the upstairs landing all the way to the master bedroom, until the very last pieces are discarded just inside the bedroom door and Viktor is pressing Yuuri against the wall, hooking Yuuri’s legs around him and grinding down with a bitten-off groan.

When they pull apart, Yuuri fixes him with a determined stare. ‘I need you to fuck me,’ he signs, and Viktor’s mouth goes dry.

“R-Right now?” he manages, his voice a lot rougher than he’d anticipated.

Yuuri considers it for a moment, and then he flushes adorably, as if he’d suddenly realised some other details he’d forgotten in his rush to declare what he wants Viktor to do to him. ‘Maybe a bath first,’ he appends. ‘We’re pretty dirty, after all.’

Viktor gladly complies, manoeuvring them into the bathroom. Yuuri perches on the edge of the tub as Viktor draws them a bath, sliding into the water as soon as the tub is full. When Viktor clambers in, however, Yuuri moves back to sit in his lap, leaning against his chest and taking his hand.

He doesn’t say a single word, but Viktor knows. Yuuri presses his lips to the golden wedding band, his eyes brimming with some emotion that Viktor hopes is happy, and then he leans up to mouth kisses against Viktor’s neck.

They don’t get much bathing done after that. Most of the bathroom floor ends up covered in water as Yuuri arches into Viktor’s fingers, his hips rocking back as Viktor slowly takes him apart, teases him open. Viktor captures his lips as he presses another finger into him, swallowing a soft gasp as his fingers brush against Yuuri’s prostate.

Somehow (Viktor’s not sure how, really) they manage to make it out of the tub and into the bed. Viktor presses Yuuri down against the pillows, lightly nipping along his collarbone before reaching for the condoms.

Yuuri’s hand on his wrist stops him. ‘I want to feel all of you,’ Yuuri admits, his face burning bright crimson at the request like it’s the first time. Viktor laughs at that, bending in closer to pepper soft kisses all over Yuuri’s face before reaching for the lube instead.

“Let me know if you need to stop,” he warns as he slicks himself up, earning himself an unamused stare from his husband.

‘Not bloody likely,’ Yuuri retorts, and Viktor can’t help but laugh at that.

“Really? Is that a challenge, then?”

Yuuri’s smirk grows distinctly more devious, and before Viktor really realises it he’s been flipped on his back. Yuuri straddles him, his eyes dancing as his sure hands line the head of Viktor’s cock up with his entrance.

“Yuuri,” breathes Viktor, “please —” and he doesn’t need to say more, because Yuuri sinks down on him, and Viktor loses himself in the heat of Yuuri all around him.

Once Viktor is fully seated inside him, Yuuri traces the shape of his brow and asks, ‘Didn’t I tell you to fuck me like it’s your last night on earth?’

And from that moment on Viktor throws all caution to the wind. He can’t keep his hands off Yuuri for more than a second; even though he knows his husband’s body well by now, in this moment it’s as if he’s memorising it again for the first time. He lingers, though, in the dip of Yuuri’s pelvis, mesmerised by the rhythm of their movements as Yuuri rides his cock.

When he pulls out, he is met with a protesting huff that he responds to with a soft chuckle. “Get on your stomach,” Viktor instructs, and Yuuri complies, presenting his ass with a playful wriggle and an impatient look tossed over his shoulder.

It doesn’t take Viktor long to thrust back inside, then, peppering kisses down the column of Yuuri’s spine, leaving bite marks along the back of his neck. Yuuri gasps the first time he feels it, his hips slamming back to meet Viktor’s, and Viktor has to think about explaining that broken antique bedframe to their landlady in Torvill in order to stop himself from coming right then and there.

Nevertheless, he picks up the pace, and Yuuri matches him in equal measure. His breaths come out now in ragged pants and bitten-off growls, and even one soft whimper when Viktor tastes again the salt of his sweat-soaked skin at the junction of his neck and collar. Running his tongue from Yuuri’s collar to the first of his vertebrae, Viktor slows his pace just a little to appreciate how he had wrecked his husband so far.

He pulls out, turns Yuuri around to face him, drinks in the sight of his flushed face and heaving chest. Yuuri looks wrecked, looks unravelled from the inside out, and the way he squirms and bucks against Viktor with wanton need makes it clear that he expects Viktor to take him further apart and then put him back together once again.

So he does. Spreading Yuuri’s legs and pressing a kiss to his cheek, Viktor lines himself up again and thrusts inside once more, loving the way Yuuri draws him in until it’s like there’s no distinction between the two of them anymore.

It’s only when he hears a small sniffle that he pauses, pulling out again and looking at Yuuri once more. Tears are rolling down Yuuri’s cheeks, and though Viktor tries to rationalise it away, that familiar cold vice grips at his stomach all the same.

“Is something wrong?” he asks quietly, but Yuuri shakes his head vehemently.

‘I’m just so incredibly happy,’ he explains, his hands trembling slightly, and Viktor can’t help but laugh as he gathers Yuuri into his arms again to kiss away the tears.

They rejoin yet again like that, wrapped around one another with Yuuri’s hands fisted in Viktor’s hair and Viktor’s hands re-memorising the curve of Yuuri’s shoulder blades. But Yuuri isn’t the only one he’s rediscovering — he’s also casting the dacha from its former status as a simultaneously beloved and reviled childhood sanctuary into the warm light of his new life together with Yuuri. Through some strange and wonderful miracle, they’re _married_ to each other now, and they have the rest of their lives to make new memories out of old ones.

He barely has time to ponder these thoughts further, because Yuuri’s hips suddenly pick up in speed, and all remaining coherent thoughts fly out of Viktor’s head. He loses himself to the touch of his husband, content to try and match the cadence of his breaths and the beating of his heart until he is spilling with a reverent whisper of Yuuri’s name on his lips.

With a few deft flicks of his wrist, Viktor sends Yuuri coming soon after. This time, when he pulls out, a bit of his come spills out of Yuuri, leaving the selkie looking fully debauched against the sheets of the bed. Viktor drinks it in, memorises the fucked-out, blissful expression on Yuuri’s face and the smell of sex and sweat, memorises the slow heaving breaths Yuuri takes as he tries to return his heart rate back to normal.

And then with a kiss, he goes to find a washcloth to clean them up.

Yuuri settles into his arms afterwards, curling close to his body with a contented sigh. Dimly, Viktor thinks back to words he’d written two years ago, about the two of them as the amalgamation of two wholes slotting into one another, their flaws and foibles joining together perfectly. Yuuri takes his hand and entwines their fingers, pressing kisses to the tips of each; in turn, Viktor’s heart skips a beat.

Loving Yuuri Katsuki is like simultaneously burning in the heart of a sun and coming home. As far as he’s concerned, he has not always been worthy of that privilege. But Yuuri believes he is, and that’s what really matters in the end.

Yuuri is the answer to a question Viktor never wants to stop posing, and perhaps that’s enough. As he watches Yuuri’s breathing even out in sleep, Viktor presses a kiss into the selkie’s hair, and thanks every deity he can think of for the opportunity to love and be loved by him.

* * *

It is four in the morning when Viktor nudges him awake. While normally Yuuri would grumble and protest and try to go back to sleep, something in the insistence of Viktor’s voice tells Yuuri he should indulge his husband’s unnatural waking habits, just this once.

Outside the windows, the sky is still dark, slowly lightening into grey with each passing minute. As they head down the stairs, Yuuri notices that the clothes from last night have been picked up. Viktor must have been up even earlier, then.

‘Where are we going?’ he wonders when they enter the kitchen to see a thermos and a notebook, as well as several blankets. Yuuri is at least glad he managed to throw on his pyjamas before he was shepherded out of the bedroom, but even so he wraps one of the blankets around him, and looks inquisitively at Viktor.

“Down to the dock,” says Viktor in response to his previous question, one hand gently resting in the small of Yuuri’s back as he leads him out the back door.

Stepping through dew-strewn grass and early morning fog, Yuuri breathes in the tranquil air as they arrive at the little dock. Out here at this hour all he hears are birds chirping in the dark, and the little rippling laps of the lake against the shore. Briefly, he wonders about the ringed seal he’d met, and how they must be faring, but Viktor then guides him to sit on the end of the dock, placing the notebook into his lap once he does so, and Yuuri’s centre of gravity shifts back to revolve around Viktor’s once more.

“Tea?” Viktor asks. Yuuri nods, so Viktor pours him a small cup before settling down next to him. For a moment, they stay like this, listening to the rippling waters of the lake and the trills of nightingales and cuckoos. The tea warms Yuuri up, but not as much as the comforting presence of Viktor’s hand in his.

After a moment, Viktor speaks up again. “I wanted to tell you that you were right,” he says quietly. “I spent half of this trip in the past when I should have been spending it with you.”

Yuuri squeezes his hand. ‘Neither of us were right or wrong,’ he says after a moment. ‘We had fun, right?’

Viktor’s smile is bracing, and he puts an arm around Yuuri, leaning into him. “Yeah,” he agrees. He shivers a little, so Yuuri extends the blanket to include Viktor.

‘I was thinking about children,’ he says after a moment.

Viktor blinks at him. “Yuuri, you can’t just surprise me like that,” he chides.

Yuuri raises an eyebrow. ‘You’ve never thought about it?’ he asks.

“No, no. I just — I thought I would be the first one to bring it up.” Viktor laughs sheepishly, rubbing at his nape. “We’ll have lots of them, right? We can adopt, or find a surrogate, or —”

‘I’d like to adopt,’ replies Yuuri, simply. Viktor squeezes his hand in reply, smiling that beloved heart-shaped smile.

“We’ll do whatever your heart desires,” he replies, leaning in and brushing soft kisses across Yuuri’s brow, dipping down just around his lashes. Yuuri smiles into the touch, his heartbeat racing harder with each new kiss. They’ll be leaving in the afternoon, heading back to Saint Petersburg before their flight back to Scotland the next day. And though he feels a bit sad at having to leave the dacha and the lake behind, he knows they’ll be back again someday.

Someday. It had always been somewhat nebulous for him before, this idea of a future, but somehow somewhere during this honeymoon some of the pieces have begun to slot into place. Maybe there will be a family for them in the future, bright voices and childish laughter lighting up their lives. Maybe there will be more books in the future, filling the shelves with stories of love and loss and hope and family.

But the one constant will be Viktor, and that’s what really matters.

Slowly the sky lightens into pale grey. Slowly, the lake begins to wake up, the tunes of the songbirds growing more lively as the sky continues to change. Yuuri looks at Viktor now, admires the silver sleekness of his hair and the brilliance of his eyes and smile.

He reaches out and takes the notebook, briefly stealing a kiss from Viktor’s lips, and can’t help but think that, in this moment, kissing Viktor feels just like coming home.

 _Okay, then_ , he writes in the margins at the top. _Let’s write this new story together._

**Author's Note:**

> Lo, I have loved thee long, long have I yearned and entreated!  
> Tell me how I may win thee, tell me how I must woo.  
> Shall I creep to thy white feet, in guise of a humble lover?  
> Shall I croon in mild petition, murmuring vows anew? 
> 
> Shall I stretch my arms unto thee, biding thy maiden coyness,  
> Under the silver of morning, under the purple of night?  
> Taming my ancient rudeness, checking my heady clamor—  
> Thus, is it thus I must woo thee, oh, my delight? 
> 
> Nay, ‘tis no way of the sea thus to be meekly suitor—  
> I shall storm thee away with laughter wrapped in my beard of snow,  
> With the wildest of billows for chords I shall harp thee a song for thy bridal,  
> A mighty lyric of love that feared not nor would forego! 
> 
> With a red-gold wedding ring, mined from the caves of sunset,  
> Fast shall I bind thy faith to my faith evermore,  
> And the stars will wait on our pleasure, the great north wind will trumpet  
> A thunderous marriage march for the nuptials of sea and shore.
> 
> — Lucy Maud Montgomery, “[The Sea to the Shore](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/20601/the-sea-to-the-shore/)”
> 
> Thank you to [history-rover](https://history-rover.tumblr.com/), [maydei](https://maydei.tumblr.com/), [icanhinatashouyoutheworld](https://icanhinatashouyoutheworld.tumblr.com/), and [thehobbem](https://thehobbem.tumblr.com/) for beta reading and offering feedback! Also thanks to Rivals Discord for answering some questions about Russia haha
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](https://omgkatsudonplease.tumblr.com/)!


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